Gearing Up for Holiday Sales: 2021 Trends and Opportunities

Starting a business always sounds fun when you’re casually chatting with friends and family over drinks. You’re brainstorming and writing ideas down on napkins. There’s energy and excitement in the air. 


If you wake up the next morning, still jazzed to start this new venture, ask yourself these seven questions before you make the leap and become an entrepreneur. 

1. Why are you starting the business? 

For money or passion? Successful entrepreneurs are rarely motivated by money, but it’s an incentive that can keep fueling your passion. 


If you have pride and believe in your work, your potential clients will sense it! 

2. Can you start it as a side hustle?

While working a full-time job, can you slowly start your own business? This path protects you from greater losses, but it also reduces the rate at which you can grow your business. 


When you work full-time on your business, you’ll accomplish your goals faster. But moving slower allows you to make adjustments to your goals without major financial impacts. 

3. Do you want a partner?

Or should you go it alone? Having a partner is great—until it isn’t. You’ll need to be honest with yourself and do some soul-searching to see if you would make a great partner. 


Do you really need a partner (someone to contribute their expertise, money, and skills), or do you just want someone to hold your hand on this scary new adventure? 

4. Is what you are offering needed?

Are you solving a pain point? Do your research to see if there are offerings like yours on the market. Are they successful? 


If your business idea is truly unique, try sending surveys to potential clients to determine if they’d buy what you are offering and what they’d be willing to pay. Speaking of clients… 

5. Who are your potential clients? 

What are the demographics? Who would you want as a client? Do they share your ideals? Where would you find these people—online, in person? Why would they want to work with you?

6. How much money are you willing to invest? 

Will you bootstrap it? Get investor support? Every business requires an initial investment, whether it’s buying furniture for an office or creating a digital presence. The Small Business Association offers loans for small businesses at every stage. 

7. Are you willing to work long hours for little money? 

How about losing sleep over issues in your business? Are you ready to be exhausted and exhilarated at the same time? Owning a business isn’t for the faint of heart. It requires grit to pursue entrepreneurship and keep chasing it. And that requires passion and perseverance. 


Things will go wrong (sometimes horribly), but they’ll also go really well. In those moments when it seems like all things are moving in the right direction, you’ll have a feeling like no other. When you experience this feeling, you’ll feel energized to continue on to your next goal. 


If you’re thinking about starting a new business, First Steps Financial is here to help you. We can set up your QuickBooks Online file properly to help manage your finances and keep you updated on revenues and expenses. Contact us today!

Our Latest Insight

Five Warning Signs Your COO and Accounting Aren’t Talking

By Alisa McCabe • September 28, 2026
Article 2 ended with a question. What would you actually see first if this relationship started breaking down inside your business? Here is the answer. You would see five things. If you are like most owners reading this, you are already looking at two or three of them. None of the five announces itself as a communication problem. Each one shows up as friction inside your accounting systems, wearing a perfectly reasonable disguise. That is the difficulty. On the surface, none of these looks like a broken relationship. Each looks like something else entirely. A busy month. A tough quarter. A personality difference between two people who were never going to be friends anyway. Every one of them gets explained away the first time you see it. That is exactly what makes them expensive. This article does not fix any of it. Article 4 does that. The job here is naming what is already sitting in front of you. Most owners walk past these signs for years without recognizing what they are looking at.  ​ Part 3 of a 5-part series on the COO-Accounting relationship

What a Growth-Focused COO-Accounting Relationship Looks Like

By Alisa McCabe • September 21, 2026
Article 1 ended with a question. When does your COO actually talk to Accounting before a decision gets made? How long did it take you to answer? Immediately? Minutes? Maybe you could not think of a single example. Bills get paid, projects keep moving, and financial reports show up. Nothing feels obviously broken, so you conclude everything is fine. If that question made you uncomfortable, you are not alone. Here is the part that keeps this problem alive. You only know what good looks like based on what you have already lived through. Most owners have never worked inside a business where Operations and Accounting were intentionally built to function together. So they measure their company against their own status quo. This article gives you a different reference point. You will see what the relationship looks like day to day, what rhythm it runs on, and five things you can check this week. None of it requires scrapping what you have built. The people are already in the building. The data already exists. What changes is how the pieces are arranged, and how much leverage you get out of the company you have right now.  ​ Part 2 of a 5-part series on the COO-Accounting relationship

The Missing Relationship That Is Stifling Your Growth

By Alisa McCabe • September 14, 2026
"Accounting is a stick in the mud." "I'm not really sure what a COO does all day." "The CFO just plays around with their little Excel sheets." You have probably heard one of those lines. You may have thought one yourself. They sound like harmless office humor. They actually point to something expensive. In most growing service businesses, nobody has ever defined how operations and accounting work together. The people who produce your financial reports sit outside the very decisions those reports are meant to inform. That gap costs you every single month, quietly, in profit that should have been there.  ​ Part 1 of a 5-part series on the COO and Accounting relationship